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Bulgaria inquires after missing Turks

By VERA RICH

The forced ‘assimilation’ of hundreds of thousands of Turks by Bulgaria
during the 1980s is to be investigated by a special commission of the Bulgarian
Academy of Sciences.

The policy, instigated by the country’s disgraced communist leader Todor
Zhivkov, compelled Bulgarian citizens with Turkish names to replace them
with Slavonic equivalents. According to the then political doctrine, Bulgaria
had no Turkish minority. People who considered themselves to be Turks were
mistaken. They were, the communists argued, descendants of Bulgarians who
had been converted to Islam during the centuries when Bulgaria formed part
of the Ottoman empire.

The Academy of Sciences as an institution played no obvious part in
the campaign. But some members of the academy published anthropological
and ethnographic articles of doubtful scientific validity to support the
official theory. The commission of inquiry is intended to uncover the part
played in the policy by its members.

The rights of ethnic Turks to choose their own language, religion and
names were reinstated in late 1989 after Zhivkov’s fall. By that time more
than 300 000 Turks had abandoned their homes and fled across the border
to Turkey.